Earning your master’s degree in Labor Studies at the UMass Labor Center puts you right at the center of the issues and debates around labor, work, and social justice.

For over fifty years, we have built one of the premiere graduate programs in Labor Studies in the United States. With a near 100% placement record, our graduates are in high demand to join our over 1,000 alumni in key position in the labor movement and social justice organizations.

Labor is changing. As the attacks on labor have intensified, unions have been taking bold new directions. They have also combined efforts with a wide variety of alt-labor organizations, building strong connections with new social movements in broad-based coalitions for justice. Become one of our graduates who are at the forefront of many of these new and exciting developments to build justice and dignity in the workplace and the community, here and abroad.

Recent News

The Labor Center is thrilled to announce that we have received a $15,000 grant from Mass Humanities to support, "Visions of Labor: Film and Worker Voices.” This project, in Mass Humanities' words, "aims to help local workers see their work lives as worthy of attention and part of a historical trajectory in which they are agents."

Sean Spicer represents a white nationalist vision of America and the world that we reject. The UMass Labor Center offers an alternative vision of solidarity that sees the struggle for economic justice as inseparable from the fight for racial justice and gender equity. We will demonstrate our displeasure with Mr. Spicer tomorrow, but we do that every day.

The UMass Undergraduate Journal on Work, Labor and Social Movements is accepting original submissions for its Fall 2019 issue from undergraduate students currently enrolled at any University of Massachusetts campus. The journal brings together undergraduate work that displays academic excellence and offers critical insights on the experience of working people and their organizations. Deadline for Submissions is April 30, 2019.

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The Labor Center is thrilled to announce that we have received a $15,000 grant from Mass Humanities to support, "Visions of Labor: Film and Worker Voices.” This project, in Mass Humanities' words, "aims to help local workers see their work lives as worthy of attention and part of a historical trajectory in which they are agents."

Sean Spicer represents a white nationalist vision of America and the world that we reject. The UMass Labor Center offers an alternative vision of solidarity that sees the struggle for economic justice as inseparable from the fight for racial justice and gender equity. We will demonstrate our displeasure with Mr. Spicer tomorrow, but we do that every day.

The UMass Undergraduate Journal on Work, Labor and Social Movements is accepting original submissions for its Fall 2019 issue from undergraduate students currently enrolled at any University of Massachusetts campus. The journal brings together undergraduate work that displays academic excellence and offers critical insights on the experience of working people and their organizations. Deadline for Submissions is April 30, 2019.

Save the date! The Labor Center is planning an exciting conference that will employ the power of film to explore questions of workers' social and economic conditions, and to spur creative action on critical movement issues and organizing in all forms. Events will be held at the UMass Amherst Campus Center, November 9-10, 2019.

The UMass Labor Center joins in the widespread condemnation of the treatment of people of color on this campus and campuses across the country. Bigotry promotes intolerable working conditions. It trades in the idea that one group of people is any better than another. When we go to the bargaining table, we demand that management treat us with respect, and we demand the same respect when one of us, irrespective of our background, enters the workplace or studies to enter the workforce.

On March 2-3, the Labor Center called together 200 leading labor scholars and labor and community activists to document the impact of the Trump-era policy changes on workers and their union and to chart the way forward.